Fact Sheets:
Prospects
for Success of an International Peace Conference

(Updated October 2007)

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud
Olmert is negotiating
with Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud
Abbas in an effort to make the planned international
conference in Annapolis a success and move
the parties closer to peace. Israeli leaders
never want to miss an opportunity for peace
so Olmert has agreed to attend the meeting
even though he knows the prospects for success
are remote.

The Bush
Administration is pushing for an
agreement because it has come under constant
criticism for failing to be more actively
engaged in peacemaking, because State Department
Arabists believe the fallacious argument
of Arab allies that forcing Israel’s
capitulation to their demands will improve
America’s standing in the region, and
because achieving a peace agreement between
Israelis and Palestinians offers a potential
way of salvaging the president’s legacy.
Many people also believe that the likelihood
of greater violence and instability increases
in the absence
of negotiations. Unfortunately, the conditions
on the ground give little reason for optimism
and the administration’s
initiative faces a number of seemingly intractable
obstacles.

The foremost problem is
the weakness of Abbas.
He is president in name only. He does not
control the Gaza
Strip and has only tenuous
control over parts of the West
Bank. Assuming
he has the best of intentions, it is impossible
for Abbas to implement any agreement he would
sign. He has shown little interest in preventing terrorists from
trying to attack Israel from
the West
Bank and no power to stop Kassam rockets from being launched from Gaza. He
also has little support from the people or
the armed factions that rule parts of the
territories by mob law.

Furthermore, the contentious final status
issues remain no closer to resolution today
than when the Oslo
accords were signed 14
years ago. Abbas has shown no willingness
to compromise on settlements, borders, Jerusalem or refugees. The continuing irredentism of
the Palestinians remains the greatest single
obstacle to peace.

Israelis are also reluctant to make new
concessions to the Palestinians after the
experience with disengagement. Had the Palestinians
spent the last two years creating the infrastructure
of a state in Gaza, resettling refugees from
camps to permanent housing, stopped weapons
smuggling and halted all terror and rocket
fire, Israelis would have been open to additional
territorial compromises in the West
Bank.
Since none of those positive steps occurred,
few Israelis are willing now to risk giving
up more land without ironclad guarantees
of security.

Olmert has
repeatedly expressed a willingness to give
up territory in the West
Bank, however, the current governing
coalition, and Olmert’s low level
of public support since the war with Hezbollah,
makes it difficult for him to offer concessions
without evidence that Abbas can
deliver on any promises that he makes. The
Israeli public has repeatedly shown itself
to be responsive when an Arab leader demonstrates
by word and deed a commitment to peace, and
would likely support compromises that are
currently unpopular if the Palestinians took
serious steps to build confidence, such as
releasing kidnaped soldier Gilad Shalit,
stopping the rocket fire from Gaza and preventing
attempted terrorist infiltrations from the West
Bank. In the absence of such steps,
along with far more conciliatory rhetoric,
Israelis will not support major changes in
the status quo.

The Palestinians could also
help their cause if they called upon the
other Arab
countries to take positive steps.
In particular, the Saudis should
be told the only way to be relevant to the peace
process is to recognize
Israel and engage in direct talks. The Egyptians need
to stop the smuggling of arms and cash into
Gaza that is strengthening Hamas and
further undermining Abbas. Jordan and Egypt,
in turn, need to lean on the Palestinians
to give up their maximal demands. Despite
the recent tensions with Syria,
a peace agreement has been on the table for
several years and remains unfulfilled
only because President Bashar
Assad rejects the formula of
exchanging peace and security for the Golan
Heights.

The final obstacle to progress toward peace
is the forum planned for the negotiations.
The Bush
Administration’s decision
to convene an international conference in
the hope of achieving an agreement represents
a return to the consistently unsuccessful
approach favored by the UN, State Department
officials and former president Jimmy
Carter.

The precedents for the success and failure
of negotiations were established as early
as 1949 when Ralphe Bunche insisted that
the Arabs negotiate armistice agreements
with Israel one at a time. This approach
resulted in the signing of accords between
Israel and Egypt, Syria, Jordan and Lebanon over a five-month period. By contrast, the
UN’s Palestinian Conciliation Commission
tried to transform these armistice agreements
into peace treaties at a conference in Lausanne.
The mediators in Switzerland tried to pressure
Israel into drastic territorial concessions
and the Arabs and Jews never met face to
face. The result was a reuniting of the Arab
League coalition and the stiffening of Arab
opposition to any compromise.

Almost 30 years later, President
Carter was intent on repeating this mistake.
Few people remember that the stimulus to Anwar
Sadat’s momentous decision to go to Jerusalem – the
psychological and political breakthrough
that made peace between Israel and Egypt
possible – was Sadat’s conviction
that Carter’s desire to hold a conference
was such a bad idea it would be impossible
for him to achieve Egypt’s goal of
regaining the Sinai from Israel.

The problem with an international
conference is that the Arab participants
have an incentive to stake out the most extreme
positions. None of them can show a willingness
to compromise that might be interpreted by
their friends and rivals as weakening the
collective effort to force Israel to capitulate
to their demands. In Sadat’s case,
he knew the Syrians would never make peace
with Israel and he did not want to allow
them a veto over his intention to negotiate
an agreement. He, therefore, went behind
Carter’s back
to negotiate directly with the Israelis.
Carter’s conference never convened
anyway, in large measure because of Syrian
obstinance.

The scenario that Sadat feared was played
out in 1991 when the administration of George
H.W. Bush pressured Israel to go to an international
conference in Madrid. Prior to the meeting,
Israel was asked to take confidence-building
measures, and it did by releasing 1,000 Palestinian
prisoners, instituting reforms in Gaza and
reopening a West Bank university. Simultaneously,
Secretary of State James Baker called on
the Arab states to end their boycott of Israel
and support the rescinding of the odious “Zionism
is racism” resolution at the UN, but
they refused and insisted that Israel withdraw
from the disputed territories without offering
anything in return.

The Madrid conference went
forward and was considered a great accomplishment
by many because the Syrians, Jordanians,
Lebanese, Palestinians and Israelis were
in the same room (the Saudis refused to come
just weeks after U.S. forces saved their
kingdom from Saddam
Hussein). Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak
Shamir gave a conciliatory speech, holding
out an olive branch to his neighbors. Each
of the Arab leaders then proceeded to saw
the branch into dust with bellicose speeches
that offered no prospect of compromise or
coexistence. The conference ended without
any agreements and the State Department approach
was superceded two years later by the Oslo
negotiations, which again were done behind
the back of U.S. officials. Those face-to-face
talks produced a formula for peacemaking
that would have led to the establishment
of a Palestinian state had the Palestinians
fulfilled the promises they made.

Olmert is
very familiar with this history. He was the
health minister at the time of the Madrid
conference. At that time, he had called for
immediate negotiations to achieve peace with
all the Arab nations as well as the Palestinians.
He remains committed to that vision. As Sadat and,
later, Jordan’s King
Hussein discovered, Israel is forthcoming
when it has American support and is confident
of the intentions of its interlocutors. Israel
cannot be pressured to accept conditions
that undermine its security.